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Partisan Tangle Over Trade Pact With Colombia

WASHINGTON — A drive by President Bush to win passage of a modest trade deal with Colombia erupted Wednesday into an angry partisan confrontation between the White House and House Democrats, with both sides using trade as a surrogate for an election-year battle over jobs, national security and the sinking economy.

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, took the White House by surprise when she announced plans Wednesday to block a vote on the Colombia accord. The move effectively holds the measure hostage until Mr. Bush agrees to more economic relief for Americans.

Ms. Pelosi’s action would scrap House rules that require a vote within 90 days of the measure’s being submitted by the president. It came only two days after Mr. Bush’s effort to gain the upper hand by sending the Colombia bill to Congress with the understanding that a vote would be required this year.

At stake for the Bush administration and Republicans is a deal that business leaders have pushed for and that would provide support for a crucial American ally. Democrats, meanwhile, feel caught between organized labor, which opposes the deal and wants Colombia to do more to stop killings of union leaders, and business groups, many of which donate to Democratic campaigns.

Hastily assembling at the White House, a team of cabinet members led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. assailed Ms. Pelosi’s move as damaging ties to Colombia, encouraging anti-American forces in the region and jeopardizing the economy.

In the background was a rich brew of presidential politics. Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumed Republican nominee, supports the deal. But the Democrats, Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, oppose it. A top aide to Ms. Clinton, Mark Penn, resigned recently after it was disclosed that he had advised Colombia on ways to promote the pact.

Ms. Pelosi and other Democrats said they had earlier beseeched the White House not to submit the agreement— which involves a small part of United States trade — without doing more to help homeowners and the unemployed as the economy weakens.

“We’re first and foremost here to look out for the concerns of America’s working families,” Ms. Pelosi said, adding that she understood the importance of relations with Colombia, a country that has for years tapped American aid to battle narcotics traffickers and leftist insurgents.

“I do take this action with deep respect for the people of Colombia, and hope, and will be sure, that any message they receive is one of respect for their country,” she said.

But Ms. Rice said at the White House that the trade deal, which would lower tariffs in both countries, was vital to American security interests. Colombia, she said, has been a crucial ally and had come back “from the brink of being a failed state” and needed help to stand up to “very hostile anti-American states and forces in Latin America.”

As is customary for administration officials, she did not elaborate on which states she was referring to, but the administration is locked in a battle for influence in Latin America with the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez.

“What will it say if the United States turns its back now on Colombia?” Ms. Rice asked.

At the heart of the row this week was what Democrats say is an ambivalent attitude among many of them toward trade, despite the fact that organized labor, many environmental groups and many Democratic voters in states with aging industrial bases are unalterably opposed.

Veterans of the administration of President Bill Clinton, who championed trade openings with Mexico, Canada and the World Trade Organization, argue that the United States has more to gain than it has to lose from trade.

Like Republicans, Democrats raise campaign money from agribusiness, financial services like insurance and brokerage houses, high-tech manufacturing, the entertainment business and other sectors dependent on exports. Many Democratic lawmakers agree with the administration that killing trade accords merely opens the market for American competitors.

Colombia and its president, Álvaro Uribe, are also popular among Democrats, who have largely supported the multibillion-dollar aid packages.

But the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and other labor groups say Colombia’s record in curbing the assassinations of labor organizers by armed groups remains poor, despite improvements in recent years.

Republican and Democratic strategists say as many as 50 House Democrats would be tempted to vote for the Colombia pact but do not want to defy Ms. Pelosi. What many of them want most of all, many say, is to avoid a difficult vote.

The agreement was actually signed in 2006, and the president at any time had the right to submit it and get an up-or-down vote under the rules by which Congress authorizes a president to negotiate trade accords. The White House was hoping to get such a vote to force Democrats to choose.

Ms. Pelosi’s announcement that she would change the rules provoked cries of outrage from the White House of unfair play. “By the House unilaterally changing its rules, which it can do, it is upending decades of U.S. trade policy and U.S. trade law,” said Susan C. Schwab, the top United States trade envoy.

What remained unknown at the end of a day of acrimony was whether the Democrats might be willing to let the accord go to a vote if the White House made concessions on economic stimulus measures that unions supported or whether the White House was willing to make such concessions. The White House has pushed back against a second stimulus package, saying the first needs time to work.

A senior administration official, speaking anonymously to discuss internal negotiations, said the administration had offered to add spending programs to the trade deal to help workers in the United States. But another administration official said the offers from the White House were more limited.

“We’ve been trying for months to get the Democrats to tell us, ‘What is the deal?’ ” the first official said. “What is the list? Give us the ‘ask’? The candy store was open. They didn’t want to take it.”

But Democrats said the White House had been adamant in refusing to offer such incentives, despite the fact that Ms. Pelosi again told Mr. Bush, at what was described as a testy meeting on Wednesday afternoon at the White House, that the accord was not dead if he would be forthcoming.

“The fact is, this could very easily be worked out,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat and House Democratic Caucus leader who prides himself on being brusque sometimes. “We need something, infrastructure spending, a new stimulus package, a kids’ health bill. They were being totally arrogant. And I think I know something about arrogance.”

Carl Hulse contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Partisan Tangle Over Trade Pact With Colombia. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe